


Twentieth century, go to sleep

by phalangine



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: M/M, Until it isn’t, basically canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-01 12:44:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20815382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phalangine/pseuds/phalangine
Summary: Six moments in the progress of Davos and Stannis’ relationship, measured in the ways they sleep beside each other





	Twentieth century, go to sleep

**i.**

Stannis doesn’t like being at sea.

He doesn’t like many things, though, so far as Davos can tell. It’s been half a year since Davos was knighted, his oath of loyalty sworn to Stannis and, through Stannis, their jolly king, though Davos is uninterested the man. He’s too occupied with the task of puzzling out Stannis.

Davos has yet to find anything that makes Stannis so much as crack a smile. No one seems able to- though Davos could swear he’s seen his new lord‘s expression shift into something like one, and the longer Davos spends with Stannis, the more convinced he becomes that Stannis is laughing in a way they just don’t recognize.

It’s confusing and complicates his position at Stannis’ side, and Davos still doesn’t have a word for what Stannis is, so he can’t explain him to Marya. Stannis carries at least seven different types of unhappiness and does so openly, but he’s still better company than any other lord Davos has encountered.

Uniquely for a highborn man, Stannis doesn’t seem to take issue with happiness in other men. He generally keeps to himself but occasionally prompts Davos to talk about his sons and listens to Davos’ answers, which are rarely short or to the point, two qualities Stannis is otherwise unimpressed by.

Though he’s barely a man, Stannis has more guts than a roomful of his peers. He just has the misfortune of being a good man in a world that favors bad ones, and it’s left him frustrated by his own scruples that hamstring him.

Those are the same scruples that drew Davos to him, sealing his loyalty to Stannis beyond the empty oaths to the Seven.

Yet Davos worries about Stannis. His lord has the makings of a zealot, yet no one seems to recognize it. His devotion to order and duty, his fixation on giving and receiving what’s owed… It isn’t difficult to see how his natural forcefulness could shift beyond passion and into violence.

Stannis, the only person who can prevent it, sees himself as cold a man as the men around him do, and Davos won’t court ruin by pointing the disparity between that and reality. Stannis favors him, but Davos knows better than to lean hard on that favor. Not yet. Not when his lord still thinks Davos serves him out of opportunism. Maybe not ever.

The ship rocks sharply, buffeted by a wave. Stannis grits his teeth, not as violently ill as some men get but not impervious to the sea’s uneven tossing as Davos has become.

The ship they’re on wasn’t intended for a man of high standing, so the cabin they’ve been given has a single, sad-looking bed and nothing else.

Why Stannis insistes Davos stay with him a mystery clearly left unspoken.

“I’ll sleep on the floor, My Lord,” Davos offers for a second time.

Stannis gives Davos a hard look. “You won’t.”

“You’re the king’s brother, my lord-”

“As I said,” Stannis continues, pointedly talking over Davos, “you won’t sleep on the floor. We won’t stop to rest after we dock. I’m sure you’ve slept in tighter quarters than this, and I’ve no objections.”

Command given, Stannis finishes shrugging out of his tunic, folds it up, and gets under the blankets.

Davos doesn’t argue- he can’t argue- but he does feel his heart beating against his ribs as he follows Stannis’ example and sheds his outer layer of clothing before he slips into bed behind his lord.

Stannis is lying on his side, as is Davos, but they’re still pressed together too firmly to be entirely comfortable.

Davos closes his eyes, breathes deeply, and tries not to think about Stannis as a man made of flesh and bone as any other but as the brother of a king. He isn’t a man like Davos; he’s a lord, a man so far above Davos he can barely be beheld. He isn’t an attractive man who’s fallen into Davos’ bed; he’s the man Davos will serve until his death, the man who gave Davos’ sons a far greater future than Davos could have secured them on his own and placed Davos in a position of favor far above anything his birth would have allowed.

The steady rise and fall of Stannis’ back against Davos’ back is too human to ignore, though, and despite the comfort of being rocked by the waves, Davos doesn’t sleep that night.

  


**ii.**

Davos works with Stannis so often and so long into the night, it becomes a matter of practicality for him to have a cot in whatever room Stannis is occupying. 

It earns him some pointed comments, most of which compare Davos to a dog. Davos lets them roll off his back. He’s heard and been called worse, and Stannis does like dogs better than he likes people, so the insult falls flatter still.

Davos’ belly is full, his wife has a home big enough for their children, his sons are being taught to read, something Davos himself will never do… He would endure worse for less than what Stannis has already given him.

He doesn’t sleep in Stannis’ room every night or even the majority. Stannis requires more space than most men, and Davos is careful not to linger past his welcome. Unless he’s so exhausted he can’t walk straight or Stannis orders him to stay, Davos returns to his own bed.

When he does stay in Stannis’ rooms, something that’s slowly growing more frequent despite Davos’ care, Davos catches himself listening for Stannis’ breathing to slow before he falls asleep himself.

His cot isn’t as comfortable as his bed, but he’d rather stay where he is. Stannis is prone to brooding, and Davos seems to be the only person interested in keeping his mood from dipping further than it must.

It isn’t as thankless a task as the people around them seem to think.

Davos has just managed to train himself to wake up early enough to see Stannis sleep-tousled first thing in the morning when Selyse brings the Red Witch and her fervor for the Lord of Light into Stannis’ life.

It takes time for the transition to take hold, but Davos sees the shift in Stannis’ behavior long before he finds himself barred from Stannis’ rooms.

Lady Melisandre takes up residence in his stead, and Davos is forced to bend to the demands of his king’s god.

Davos will never bow to R’hllor himself. He makes no secret of this- Stannis remains the only god he serves, if he must serve one, and for the time being, Stannis is content with that.

He may not remain so, but Davos doesn’t focus on that. He’s still Stannis’ man. He will remain so even if Stannis sends him to die for a god Davos doesn’t serve.

  


**iii.**

Davos doesn’t want to do this. He wants to do anything but this. He’d rather go back to sea and relieve every terrifying storm he’s survived at once than do this.

He’s still Stannis’ Hand, though. Davos swore oaths to him. Stannis has fully split from the gods the oaths were made before, but becoming his Hand was never about Davos bonding himself before the Seven. It was never about the knighthood or the lands, though the reward did make Davos think harder about the stone-faced fledgling of a lord demanding less than the pound of flesh Davos owed. It wasn’t about the lordship and the opportunities for his sons to serve Stannis and make their own ways.

Davos’ loyalty runs deeper than that. It runs deeper than his increasing exile from Stannis’ side, deeper than wounded feelings at being pushed aside so easily, deeper than his despair at the king he serves becoming a man Davos doesn’t recognize.

He loves Stannis for keeping his word to a smuggler.

The feeling of Stannis’ left hand holding Davos’ hand in place as his right cleaved Davos’ fingertips from his hand is seared into Davos’ memory, and he doesn’t regret his choice.

Yet Davos’ new titles weigh heavily around his neck. The knighthood he was given was already more than generous, yet Stannis chose to elevate him higher still. A man whose hands are rough, whose father’s hands spent more time with the crabs than they did with other people, isn’t a man highborn lords expect to find themselves equal to. They don’t expect to bow to him as their king’s Hand.

Stannis understands the resistance to Davos, but he hasn’t faltered. He still trusts Davos as his Hand.

Others may fail Stannis, but Davos won’t. He swore it to his king and god.

Winter falls hard in the North. Even indoors, they aren’t safe from the bitter winds outside.

For all Stannis’ changes, he's as stubborn as he was the first time he walked into King’s Landing with Davos, Stannis one step ahead, chin held high as he led his smuggler through an ocean of people whose losses to pirates Davos had almost certainly profited from.

“Begging your pardon, Your Grace,” Davos says, “but this is a point I have to argue.”

Stannis’ frown deepens. The effect is marred by the blue tint to his lips, which Davos knows not to try to leverage against him. “You don’t, though, do you, Davos? As I already told you, the temperature is bearable. Unless you think you know better than your king?”

He’s right, Davos knows. Right now, before the temperature drops, Stannis is merely cold. As the long Northern night falls upon them, however, and Stannis is forced to lie down and sleep before tomorrow’s meeting with Ned Stark’s son in the Night’s Watch, the temperature will drop even further. It will gather in the room and syphon the heat from Stannis’ chest through his very breath.

“I don’t think I know better than you, Your Grace, but this is an unnecessary risk. There’s good reason Northerners don’t go off on their own.” Davos can’t tell if he’s having any effect, but Stannis hasn’t sent him away yet. That must mean something. “If you fall ill, we could lose our king. And what will we do if we lose you? Be ruled by Lannisters?”

That gets a twitch from Stannis, and Davos presses the point. “It’s only for this night. In the morning, we’ll have the right blankets for you.”

He hasn’t fully convinced Stannis, so Davos tries a different, more dangerous tack.

“You survived the Tyrells, Your Grace. Surely you can survive one night next to one of your men.”

Stannis’ eyes narrow. “One of my men.”

“One of your kingsguard, perhaps,” Davos suggests. “They’re loyal to you.”

It’s an unsettling feeling to know he’s said the wrong thing to Stannis, and though Stannis doesn’t reprimand him outright, Davos knows that’s what he’s done. With Melisandre whispering in his ear, Stannis’ passionate nature has indeed taken the turn toward zealotry Davos had feared. Stannis is still a just man, but his sense of what constitutes justice is faltering.

The cold North has done nothing to fight R’hllor’s fiery grasp around Davos’ king.

Stannis wasn’t so prone to seeing in black and white before the Red Witch came.

“Which of them would you suggest, Davos?” Stannis asks coolly. “Which of the men I must ask to kill and die for me shall I ask to warm my bed?” He tilts his head, expression turning sharp. “Which of them wouldn’t misunderstand, Davos? Which of them wouldn’t mistake it for a sign I desire him- as a sign I don’t value him for his sword,” he adds, his lips pursing.

There’s a joke to be made from Stannis’ words, one that’s clearly escaped him.

Davos thinks of Lady Selyse, who’s full of fire for the Lord of Light but none for Stannis Baratheon. The two of them are well-matched in the worst ways; their mutual lack of interest in the other has never been more clear to Davos than it is here.

Stannis shouldn’t be arguing with Davos; he should be holding his wife under the blankets.

If Marya were with Davos, they would have found their way to the inevitable fun of keeping themselves warm long before now.

There are no women in Stannis’ chamber, save the specter of Lady Melisandre. Davos doesn’t know why she isn’t here herself; she’s followed Stannis into other, less appropriate places.

There isn’t so much a squire who’s seen them together who hasn’t known Stannis is hers in more than prophecy.

Shaking his head, Davos refocuses on what Stannis actually said.

_ None of them wouldn’t misunderstand, much less keep the experience to himself, _he admits in the safety of his mind. Killing and dying for your king is one duty. Lying beside him is another, far more terrifying one.

Correctly interpreting Davos’ silence, Stannis raises his eyebrows. “Have you finished? Or must I wait for you to run through every thought in your head?”

This isn’t just. This isn’t even logical. Stannis doesn’t want to die, but that’s what he’ll do if he spends this night alone. Even the Northerners are wary of the storm coming toward them, but R’hllor has sent them a savior whose great feat will be freezing to death like any other creature made of flesh.

Davos only has one thought left.

“Perhaps you’ll accept me, then,” he suggests. He meets Stannis’ eyes steadily. “You know I won’t mistake it for anything but keeping my king warm. We’ve shared quarters before; you ought to be able to sleep near me better than you would with another man anyway.”

He isn’t sure what to expect and braces for every reaction he can think of, but Stannis’ bark of a laugh still catches him unprepared.

“These last months, you’ve barely been able to stand within twenty paces of me without looking like oh hate it,” Stannis says, “yet here you are, volunteering to keep me warm. I must still have your loyalty after all.”

“You've always had it,” Davos answers stiffly.“So long as you live, I’m yours.”

_ And after, if I outlive you. _

Stannis looks up at him for a long moment, his expression shuttered, and Davos is reminded of how much Stannis doesn’t want the throne. He doesn’t want to be up here soliciting an army of unloved men. He doesn’t want any of this.

It’s only his sense of duty that compels him to wage this war. He wouldn’t be in this frozen land full of people who don’t want him to be their king if he weren’t his parents’ dutiful, overlooked middle son.

Cressen loves Stannis as his son but not as his blood. It seems a small difference, but it’s a distinction Stannis recognizes.

No one will love him as other men are loved; he’s told himself this so often he’s made it a prophecy he fulfills on his own.

Watching Davos steadily, Stannis asks, “And loyalty is what accounts for the look you give me when I ask for your opinions?”

“You put me in an impossible position, Your Grace. You command me to be honest, yet when I speak honestly, you tell me I speak improperly.” Davos can’t summon any anger because he doesn’t have any. He’s only worried. “I cannot serve you honestly and agree with the witch’s suggestions. She wants you to be a man I don’t understand. That’s the truth as I see it.”

Stannis’ mouth twitches in scorn. “Yes, the impossible position of being the only man in Westeros who can speak directly to the king.”

He’s trying to rile Davos. It’s a habit of his, baiting Davos just to see what Davos does. Davos has never understood it- he answers everything his king asks fully and honestly- but Stannis seems to find some measure of comfort in testing him.

“I know who you are,” Davos continues. “After all these years serving you, there’s no one I know better.”

“And who am I, Davos?” Stannis rasps. In the low light, his face looks almost skeletal.

“A good man.” At Stannis’ flat look, Davos nods. “Not a kind one, but a just one. You’re a man who does things for himself. You’re Stannis of the House Baratheon, First of His Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm. You’re my king and before that, my lord. You’ve never relied on gods, much less ones who demand you make sacrifices like the ones R’hllor requires.”

He’s gone too far, but Davos’ heart hurts.

Stannis regards him silently.

“You’ll stay here,” he says eventually. “You’re my Hand. If you really believe you must argue for a place in my bed, then you must mean it. The bed is ours for the night.”

The double meaning is clear, but Stannis may as well have said nothing for all he reacts to it. Davos doesn’t acknowledge it, as he always doesn’t.

He’s never mentioned wanting Stannis the way Stannis is unintentionally implying. Not even to Marya, who shook her head the last time she saw Davos and told him she was glad to be loved by him, even if it isn’t the greatest love he has.

It’s a running joke among the highborn and lowborn alike that Stannis got Selyse with child but is still a virgin. The logistics of it are beyond Davos, but he suspects that at the heart of it, the myth is merely another slight, a means of knocking Stannis down in a way he can’t battle.

Davos knows Stannis bedded Selyse out of his sense of duty, just as he knows Stannis’ eyes don’t stray to other, comelier women. Even Melisandre, beautiful as she is, doesn’t keep Stannis’ attention the way she keeps other men’s.

Perhaps that means something. Perhaps it doesn’t. 

“I expect you know how best to stay warm in places like this,” Davos says as he walks to the bed and leans against it as he removes his boots.

“How comfortably you’ve moved from warming me in my bed to commanding me in it,” Stannis observes dryly.

“If that’s an accusation, I’d have you state it clearly so I can address it,” Davos says, pausing to look over at Stannis. “You’re my king. I serve you. If you truly wish that I leave, then I will do so until I find another means of keeping you alive.”

Stannis doesn’t respond to that. Instead, he begins to undress.

Davos looks away.

The pouch around his neck slides against his skin as he undresses. He hardly notices it now except when he has to take it off, and even then, it’s the absence he notices.

As he climbs under the blankets, Davos can’t focus on anything but the weight around his neck.

Stannis doesn’t say anything as he mirrors Davos.

They sleep back to back as they did on that ship years ago, and Stannis’ breathing is as steady as it was when he was the man Davos had just given up the sea to serve.

Davos doesn’t sleep that night, and in the morning, Stannis emerges from the bed the same stranger he was the night before, unaffected by Davos’ fears.

Nothing Davos does affects him anymore.

  


**iv.**

The sea swallowed Davos, only to spit him back out.

He has to think there was a point to that. He has to think he survived what his son didn’t because he had a task to accomplish, something only he could do.

All that separates him from Matthos is Stannis.

So it’s with twice the determination, twice the oaths, that Davos claws his way back to life, back to Stannis.

“Thought were dead.”

In a just world, he would be. His son would be mourning him, but Matthos would have survived it. He’d serve Stannis well, and he and his younger brothers would go on to do greater things than Davos could have dreamed.

But even Stannis can’t compel wildfire and broken ships, much less the dead, so Davos’ son stays dead and he’s the one left to see things through.

Stannis says nothing about any of this. He doesn’t offer Davos sympathies or regrets, and Davos doesn’t expect them. He doesn’t want them. He wants Stannis to take the throne, restore order, and put an end to all of this.

The hour is growing late one night after his return as Davos and Strannis strategize in Dragonstone’s forbidding castle, and as Stannis straightens up from the map, Davos expects to be sent away as he always is.

Instead, Stannis asks, “Is it harder when you’ve raised them? Or is it worse when you never heard them so much as wail?”

Davos swallows. He hadn’t thought Stannis would acknowledge Matthos’ death beyond formalities. “I couldn’t say, Your Grace. A lost child is a lost child- is there anything to be gained in making distinctions?”

“There is not.” Stannis frowns at the candle on his desk. “Yours is not the only son who’s died for me, Davos. This war will see more children made orphans and more parents bereft of their sons. War is loathsome for many reasons, yet the waste of life alone…”

_ Orphans. _Davos remembers belatedly that Stannis is an orphan. Steffon and Cassana had been long dead by the time Davos met Stannis. They left behind three boys who never learned how to love each other, and now it’s too late. Only Stannis remains.

Davos is an orphan of a sort, but it was by his own hand. He never had the chance to love his parents as Stannis loved his, and he’s never felt any particular loss over that.

_ Is it worse, _ he wonders, _ to be left behind as the parent or the child? _

Looking up at Davos, Stannis continues, “I detest the waste, but I cannot stop this war, Davos. I will not. You understand this.”

Davos nods. “I do, Your Grace.”

“Lady Melisandre is important to that end. I cannot defeat the lesser claimants and resist the invasion hounding the North without her and her god.”

He’s looking at Davos like he’s waiting for something, but Davos doesn’t know what that could possibly be.

“Forgive me,” he says, “but I don’t know how to answer.”

“You dislike her.”

“I dislike her counsel. Beyond that, I’ve no opinions on the woman.”

He does, but they all revolve around the things she’s allowed to have when the door closes and she’s left alone with Stannis.

Stannis quirks a brow at him. “Is that so? You have no opinions on a woman whose presence makes you behave like a jealous child?”

The back of Davos’ neck prickles, every hair standing on end. There’s no way Stannis could know. Davos hasn’t told anyone, and for all his insights into the heads of other men, Stannis is the one with the social awareness of a child.

“If you haven’t made an overture yet, make it and be done with this,” Stannis commands. “She can only say no. Agonizing in the shadows is beneath you.”

Davos needs a moment to put together the pieces of what Stannis is telling him.

“I’m sorry, Your Grace, but are you counseling me to try to court Lady Melisandre?”

“Isn’t that why you've been so intent on avoiding her? Pining after a woman you can’t bring yourself to speak with? I need you both at my side, Davos. Whatever you have to do to be my Hand once more, do it.”

It’s a relief, of a sort. Better Stannis never realizes which of them Davos envies. It would only place more of a burden on him, and Davos can never become that.

Although, Davos isn’t sure why Stannis would encourage him to express his interest in Lady Melisandre when she’s devoted to Stannis and Stannis is taken with her. She tolerates Davos, possibly likes him on certain days, but the idea of Davos harboring feelings for her is…

Less unpalatable than thinking about the way Stannis looks at her. The way he bows his head for her to touch his face.

Davos had thought he was done with this sort of pain in his chest when he married Marya, but his heart isn’t the only dead thing spat back into life.

“I’ll take care of it,” he promises, knowing it’s a lie but hoping it’s one his king will never know about. “Shall I still join you for breakfast?”

Stannis nods. “Tomorrow will be busy. Be ready at dawn.”

“I will.”

Davos pushes his chair back and gets to his feet stiffly.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m to bed, Your Grace,” Davos tells him, pausing with one hand on the table for balance.

Stannis shakes his head. “You’ll fall down the stairs.”

Davos frowns, confused.

“Your cot is in the corner,” Stannis says when Davos fails to speak.

Davos looks, and there it is. Not far from Stannis’ bed- closer than it was before, if he’s measuring correctly. He might not be; he’s tired enough to be swaying on his feet.

Davos doesn’t want to sleep on the cot. He’s older than he was the last time he slept on it, older than the mere passing of days he stopped counting. He wants to lie in a real bed and sleep like a man of his age and station deserves.

He isn’t Stannis’ dog. He’s a man, and not a young one anymore.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” Davos says, dipping his head in the best bow he can manage.

When he looks up, Stannis is looking over a letter.

Dismissed, Davos does his best to walk proudly to his cot and scrapes together the dignity of a father of seven as he lowers himself down and pulls the blankets over himself with the cold comfort of a man who’s loved by his king.

Stannis is a hard man. It follows that his love is, too.

  


**v.**

Davos is no warrior. It isn’t in his nature or in his blood. He doesn’t like hurting people, and he isn’t good at it. 

Stealing is one thing. Outwitting justice is, too. Lying and bluffing and distracting are more yet.

He’s had to fight before- even good smugglers get caught- and he’s had to kill. And every time he has, he’s paid the price.

He managed to leave before Stannis noticed Davos was looking green around the gills. As much as Davos had wanted to stay beside him, vomiting on his king would have been worse than disappearing for a few minutes.

By the time he finishes heaving, the memory of the would-be assassin bleeding out over Davos’ hands already growing less sharp, Davos is exhausted and shaky from his stomach’s attempt at turning itself inside out. His mouth tastes sour, his face is wet from unbidden tears, and he can smell his own sweat.

It’s a miserable state to be in. He’d hoped, as he always does, that the previous time he found himself like this would be the final time.

He’d thought he’d made it far enough from camp to endure this without witnesses as well, but before he’s had the chance to make himself presentable again, he hears footsteps.

Davos struggles to his feet, and Stannis doesn’t try to stop him or help him. It’s a form of kindness, Davos has come to see. Stannis recognizes indignity when he sees it, and rather than force an acknowledgement that will only make the shame worse, he stands back and lets Davos do what needs to be done to be fit to be seen by his king.

Swallowing, Davos asks, “Your Grace?”

Stannis frowns at something in the distance beyond Davos. “The attitude in the camp for today’s victory is excessive,” he says, as good an explanation for his presence out here as any. “People who argued our strategy had no chance of working are now singing my praises for being so cunning.” His mouth turns down in distaste. “If they want my favor, they need only do as they ought, as I’ve told them.”

”You’d think they would have figured out that flattery won’t work on you by now,” Davos agrees. He should monitor his words more carefully, but he’s exhausted and his king cake to find him.

“It’s all they know,” Stannis says sourly. “Robert fostered the behavior better than he cared for his army of bastards. A true king of Westeros, he was. Even Aerys didn’t leave this much of a mess.”

Davos doesn’t argue. Besides being too tired to try, Stannis is right. Robert was a great warrior and a force to be reckoned with when he was leading his troops, but he was a poor king. Accounting for the devastation that followed his death, he was even a disastrous one.

“I can’t speak for the lords, but the lowborn don’t expect honesty from their kings. The last two in living memory were exactly the type of men they would look to.”

“And what type is that, Davos? My brother had little in common with the Mad King.”

“They were both uninterested in doing a king’s work.” Drawing a steadying breath, Davos explains, “Aerys was obsessed with inflicting violence. Robert was a hedonist. Your brother was well-liked as a man, but he was little better at ruling than Aerys. Neither cared about Westeros’ prosperity; the state of things is evidence enough of that.”

He watches Stannis think that over.

The war has changed Stannis. Davos can’t put his finger on what, exactly, the difference is, but he can feel it.

“There aren’t many people who would insult my brother to my face,” Stannis muses.

“Is it an insult? It seemed like a truth spoken plainly, Your Grace.”

Stannis shakes his head. “You owe me your loyalty, not my brother. It follows you would prefer me.”

_ It follows you would prefer me when you’re speaking to me. _

There are too many things happening at once, and Davos just vomited. He should be sitting down and drinking something soothing, not navigating the many pitfalls of his king’s psyche.

Yet Stannis is here and Davos is empty-handed.

“It’s true that you were my lord before Robert was a king whose name I bothered to learn, but you made me a lord and your Hand because I was honest with you. When I say I know you to be the greater king, I do so because I believe it.”

To his relief, Stannis only eyes him warily for a few seconds before he nods.

“You’re my man, isn’t it? Your tongue is my tongue, to do with as I please.”

Davos hadn’t thought Stannis would remember that.

“I am,” he agrees, “and it is. A man doesn’t withhold what he owes to his king. I owe you my life; that makes it yours. I give it gladly.”

Stannis twists to look back at the camp. When he looks back at Davos, he’s frowning.

“A field of distinguished men, yet the only one worthy of his place is the smuggler short a third of the fingers on one hand.”

“A generous price,” Davos points out. “Merciful, some might say.”

He recognizes amusement in the lopsided curl of Stannis’ lips. It’s a genuinely warm expression on Stannis. In such a determinedly reserved man, there are entire worlds to be learned in the various hard lines and twists Stannis’ face finds.

In Storm’s End, Stannis was merciful, but the world beyond those walls is not. If it were, Davos wouldn’t have fallen in love with his lord and now his king.

A cheer goes up in the distance, and Stannis’ expression sinks back into disapproval.

“There was wine found in the castle,” he explains. “Enough for every man.”

Stannis won’t join them. Nor will he join them in flirting with and fucking the women- and the men- who follow the army. Stannis doesn’t like that they follow, and Davos had to argue with him extensively to keep him from trying to send them away.

Davos’ gut roils at the thought of drinking, but he’s been sober for far too long. Sobriety forces men to live with their thoughts, to reflect on their failings, and that’s the last thing Davos wants.

He returns to the camp with Stannis. The wine has already gotten well-disseminated, and Stannis looks like he’d rather be anywhere else as he sweeps away, returning to his tent to do things that won’t lead to him losing his shoes or worse.

Sometime later, while the rest of the camp is still celebrating at full tilt, Davos decides he’s had enough to drink. He’s a little fuzzy, nothing so bad he can’t walk. He does get turned around a couple times looking for his tent, but it was good wine, and the man next to him had been friendly.

Davos could have stayed with him. Could have left with him, too, if the way he’d been eyeing Davos was to be believed.

Davos should have stayed and found out.

He nearly wanders into a tent that, once he’s near enough to focus on it, clearly isn’t his, and with a growing sense of dread, he sets himself to finding a nice, soft bit of ground that’s far enough out of the way that he’ll have a good sleep and not get stepped on.

That’s what he's going to do. He has a plan, and he’s going to follow it.

“Aren’t you supposed to be with the rest of the men?”

Davos blinks. He was supposed to be finding somewhere safe to sleep.

Instead, he’s standing in his king’s tent and not sure how he got here.

“Ah,” he says eloquently.

Stannis frowns. “You’re drunk.”

Davos thinks about that for a moment. “Yeah.”

He remembers, belatedly, how much Stannis dislikes drinking about being around people who are drinking.

Or have been, in Davos’ case.

The flap is somewhere nearby. Davos reaches for it, but his hands are clumsy and it’s past sundown. The candle on Stannis’ desk is bright enough for writing but can’t illuminate the entire tent.

“I didn’t dismiss you.”

Davos pauses his search. He can speak fine. He just needs a moment to find the words he needs.

A long moment, probably, but he does find them.

“Apologies, Your Grace. May I… May I take my leave?”

He tries to bow, which he thinks he’s supposed to do, but stops when Stannis says, “Don’t. You’ll only fall over.”

He’s right. Of course he’s right. He’s Stannis.

“Stop flailing at the tent, Davos. You won’t find the way out by pawing at it like an animal.”

“I don’t-”

“Sleep here.”

This is important. Davos can feel it.

He can also feel the wine in his belly. And his head. Seven Hells, his brain is swimming in it.

“You’ll still sleep on the ground,” Stannis continues, “but my Hand can't be found sleeping on the ground outside with the mass of men who’ve barely earned their rank.”

Davos nods quickly.

Too quickly.

Stannis gives him a dirty look. “Do _ not _ get sick in here.”

Davos says something he hopes conveys how important it is to him that he not get sick in front of his king inside his king’s tent. He has no idea if he says it convincingly, but he does try.

Next to Stannis’ bed is a spot perfectly suited to Davos’ needs.

Lying down without falling over takes some maneuvering, but Davos manages it.

Stannis doesn’t say anything. Davos chooses not to think about that.

Sleep rushes to meet him the moment his head touches the ground.

The next morning, he doesn’t get sick in Stannis’ tent, but it’s a near thing.

Stannis doesn’t show any sympathy, as Davos expected he wouldn’t when Davos joined the men last night, but he does slow his gait as they walk through the encampment. He still moves at a clip, but Davos doesn’t have to work as hard to keep up.

It’s the only allowance Stannis will grant him. Davos knows that and accepts it gratefully.

  


**vi.**

It’s late, the hour closer to dawn than dusk, though the sky is still dark and spotted with stars.

Davos uses their light to study Stannis’ back, bared as it is to the night and to Davos.

He’s built more like Renly than Robert, broad and tall enough to cut an imposing figure but narrower in the chest. Even when he was leaner, Robert was visibly sturdier than most men; he had a weight to him neither of his younger brothers ever matched.

It’s a sore spot for Stannis, caught between his brothers as he is in both age and size. Davos likes Stannis best of the three and always has, but he doesn’t say so; Stannis would take it as a platitude rather than simple truth.

Davos follows the curve of Stannis’ left shoulder and down his upper arm and over the swell of his elbow with his eyes until he comes to the familiar, faded scars on Stannis’ forearm from his early efforts in falconry.

Proudwing was the bird’s name- a very Stannis choice. Stannis mentions the bird occasionally, relaying his failure to teach it to soar like Robert’s falcon.

Davos has weighed the potential benefits of pointing out that goshawks, according to the few falconers Davos has had the opportunity to ask, don’t fly the way falcons do. Stannis never could have taught his goshawk to be a terror from high above like Robert’s bird. No one could have.

He weighs the potential for good against the potential for bad whenever Proudwing comes up in conversation, and thus far, Davos has stuck with the better part of valor.

As Davos looks over the solid breadth of Stannis’ back, Stannis grumbles incomprehensible in his sleep, and Davos lets himself smile.

He doesn’t know everything that happened in his absence, but he does know the Red Witch said R’hllor required an offering of innocent, royal blood.

Stannis refused it.

He hasn’t said anything about it himself. Everything Davos knows is second and third hand.

It’s been more than a fortnight since then, but this is the first night Davos didn’t fall asleep in time with Stannis.

Their clothes are scattered across the floor, and Davos’ chest is red in all the places where Stannis’ mouth was. He doesn’t know what sparked the change. He doesn’t entirely care. His king has come back, and he wants even more of Davos now than he did before.

Tracing the slope of Stannis’ spine, Davos catches sight of round bruises by Stannis’ hips the size of Davos’ fingertips.

Stannis sleeps on, unguarded, and Davos lies next to him, heart beating hard enough to hurt.

The blankets have slipped down past Stannis’ hip. Just looking at his skin bared to the cold air makes Davos shiver.

He lifts the edges and gently tugs them higher so thry cover Stannis’ shoulder. The world is full of violence, and Stannis doesn’t have the Lord of Light to protect him anymore.

Davos will have to be enough.

Closing his eyes, Davos draws a deep breath in and slowly lets it out. He’s tired, and sleep is only a breath away.

Stannis mumbles something else unintelligible and shifts in his sleep, rolling onto his belly and pushing his face into his pillow.

He’s going to have terrible bed head in the morning. Davos is going to watch him put himself in order as Stannis always does, but Davos will know some of that mess came from his fingers. The sweat Stannis will wash off came from being with Davos.

That’s for the morning. For now, Davos shifts closer to Stannis, drawn by the warmth of Stannis’ skin and the awful knowledge that Stannis is vulnerable now. He’s fragile, his long, solid back as breakable as anyone else’s.

Stannis may not be beloved in the eyes of the realm, but he is by Davos.

It’s a start.

**Author's Note:**

> this is messy, but the rem joke was too good to pass up


End file.
